Over the years, governments and automakers launched initiatives to improve road traffic efficiency, safety, and people mobility. They have been working on various aspects of intelligent transportation systems (ITSs), which aim to improve decision-making, availability of information, and communication technologies to provide applications and services to boost the transportation systems. The development of new applications and services for ITS depends on the availability of different data sources, what it is not the current case. Many studies focus on the communication issues of applications and their associated challenges. To reveal the recent vehicular data use, we examined the most remarkable studies of the last few years, which describe services and applications for ITS, however with a focus on the data employed by them. We introduce the concept of vehicular data space (VDS), which is then used to describe the vehicular scenario from the perspective of data. Moreover, we outline a taxonomy, according to the different data sources. We also categorize the applications, highlighting the data each one used in their approach. Finally, we present some challenges and open issues related to the process for data creation, data preparation, data processing, and data use. In a nutshell, this paper constitutes one of the first holistic surveys on services and applications for ITSs, focusing on the data used by them, as well as their future challenges.
Index Terms-Vehicular data space (VDS), vehicular sensor data, connected vehicles, intelligent transportation system (ITS), heterogeneous data, vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET).
I. INTRODUCTIONM ORE and more cities will have to deal with significant issues related to transportation and traffic because people and goods are in constant need for quicker and safer mobility modes. The number of fatalities and injuries on the road has achieved an alarming scenario. Globally, 1.3 million people die every year, and up to 50 million suffer severe injuries. These facts have a direct impact on the economics of nations, leading to costs in the order of about 2% to 5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in many countries [1]. It is also reported that traffic congestion results in critical economic and environmental costs. In 2011, 498 U.S. urban areas were